The Nervegas Legacy
by Connie Nervegas
Summary: Can Raph survive life in the Nervegas family? This probably counts as a parody of self inserts.


_I was just wondering what my own self-insert would be like and had these horrifying images of Raph living in Michigan and interacting with my family. Self inserts always seem to have lots of cuddling and giggling and stuff. Now what's interesting about that?_

The Nervegas family had lived on the same rural Michigan land for over 150 years. Their ancestors populated the cemetery a few roads away, but in recent decades the family farm had denigrated. Only a few old ladies of the Nervegas clan survived, desperately clinging to the last vestiges of greatness. They had cleared the land when Indians still roamed back before the county lines were drawn up. Now they couldn't pay their land taxes.

All hope for the Nervegas family legacy lay upon one individual. Connie. The last surviving daughter of the family. No sons for three generations. Connie had never given the family much hope. She spent most of her time writing fanfiction and reading about mummies and communism.

But one day that changed. She brought home a man. Well, not a man exactly. But close enough. He looked like a man and sounded like a man, but he was green and wore nothing but a belt and red bandanna around his face.

Her aunt Mary playfully asked him if he was a train robber, choosing to politely ignore his nudity.

Her boyfriend was Raphael Hamato, a mutated ninja from New York City. She had convinced him to move to Michigan and they moved in together.

As much as the Nervegas family wanted Connie to find a man, they were deeply displeased with her choice. He swore. He drank. He smoked. They were a good old Baptist family. A few of their ancestors had testified in the Salem witch trials. They believed that playing cards were sent from the devil. And now she was shacking up with a guy who used the f-word right and left.

It didn't seem to bother any of them that he wasn't exactly human. In fact, her mother barely noticed. Just asked him if he could rent out advertising space on the back of his shell.

But Raph and Connie were living together. This was a big problem for the Nervegas family. No child of Sharon's would shack up with any man or turtle and she hinted around that maybe it would be better for tax reasons to get married. Raph elegantly said, "I ain't getting married. I'm getting sex for free."

These crude declarations did offend the delicate sensibilities of the old ladies, but it did nothing to curb their enthusiasm for Raph's masculine talents. He received at least one call a day from Sharon, asking him, "Could you come and replace the mercury light at Ma's?" "Could you mow the grass? The mower don't work and the grass is real tall."

Raph had a difficult time living in Michigan. First of all, Michigan is sorely lacking in ninjas. It is considered one of the low points of the state and was recently addressed in Governor Snyder's state of the state address. All attempts to lure power hungry villains and vengeance seeking ninjas to cities like Grand Rapids, Lansing and Detroit had so far failed. He didn't mention the Upper Peninsula because secretly he was in talks to sell it to Canada.

So life for a ninja was quite difficult for Raphael. He spent most days exploding in passionate fury at his totally passive aggressive girlfriend. His insatiable sexual appetites were usually answered with, "Should I put you out for the night so you can find somebody's leg to hump?" They lost the deposit on their apartment when he punched several holes in the wall.

But there was some use for his sexy anger. Sharon called Raph one day, asking for retribution for a crime. It was an act of insult against the proud name of Nervegas.

Someone had been stealing the asparagus out of the front yard and she wanted answers. Blood. She wanted blood from the culprit. And Raph obliged, returning the severed hands of the offending neighbor still clutching the asparagus sprigs between its cold fingers.

But these happy times were not enough to preserve his relationship with Connie. Much strain was put on the relationship when Connie's great-great-half-aunt moved in with her great-aunt. They lived in the old family manse, a 150 year old farm house full of cats. Her great-great-half-aunt Mamie had moved back to the Nervegas farm after she left her old home up north near Traverse City, losing all of the family valuables in the move. That year at Christmas, Raph smoked out on the porch, tossing black walnuts at the cats that scurried around him and then listened to a speech from Mamie the matriarch, expounding the evils of liquor, tobacco and shacking up. Raph stood up, called her a bitch and stomped out of the house. He tried to drive off dramatically, but the car sank in the mud in the driveway and he was forced to stampede around the front yard uselessly screaming "FUCK" while the old ladies shook their heads in the house and called him a heathen.

Eventually, he was forced back into the house to retrieve his woman and order her out to the car. She soundly ignored him and told him that she couldn't leave until after dessert because it violated the most ancient and sacred Nervegas customs and he would have to endure. He sulked and listened to Mamie describe her legendary adventures. She had thrown her back out butchering a goat in her basement single-handedly, thrown her sister-in-law's cat off a bridge in a pillowcase, driven the wrong way down a one way street on purpose to get directions from a cop and ran outside in a tornado to secure a precious stack of sheet metal.

That summer he left Connie. But not before doing one last chore for her mother, bringing her the head of the neighbor who had cut down the biggest tree on the Nervegas farm.

So Raph was finally overpowered by a force more insidious than he could have ever imagined. Estrogen. He left Connie and returned to the sewers from whence he came and Connie went back to her stories.


End file.
